


Best Things dwell out of Sight

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Beards (Facial Hair), Conversations, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 04:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11936226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He couldn't bear to go on this way. She couldn't believe her eyes.





	Best Things dwell out of Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slimwhistler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slimwhistler/gifts).



Dr. Hale was to blame for it. He had never had Dr. Foster’s compunction about making sure his instruments were properly cleaned and stored after a procedure, which only flagged when they were overrun with boys hemorrhaging to death in the hallways Emma had once skipped along. Nor had he Dr. Summers’s unexpectedly intrinsic neatness about a surgery, disturbing his surroundings as little as possible, in only that one sphere as his desk and personal linen attested. Dr. Hale had left a jumble after Private Campbell’s amputation, scalpels swaddled in discarded bandages and cotton lint and the chaplain had been too quick to help the orderly lift the boy, now lighter by a leg but with a chance to live in its place; the chaplain had cut his right hand cleanly but deep, across the palm and into the base of the thumb. Dr. Foster had sewn it up, taking as much care as when he operated on a man’s eye socket, and it was expected to heal, but in the meantime, Mr. Hopkins was forced to accommodate the dressed wound as best he could. This meant he must return to his proper responsibilities, to pray with the boys and prepare a weekly sermon, to greet and console visiting families, and that he could not assist in any other medical care, nor even any labor in the contraband camp. Dr. Foster had been quite clear about that, having found the chaplain standing beside Miss Jenkins, ushering him back to Mansion House and promising an orderly would come in the forenoon to help with the patients. Since Major McBurney’s hasty departure, Dr. Foster had become the chief medical officer again but during this second tenure, the hospital and contraband camp were more harmonious in their co-existence and Miss Jenkins was known to take tea with Mrs. Foster on Thursday afternoons when she could be spared from the camp. 

What would Mary have said to find herself in such a situation as Emma did now? The thought was as fleet and flickering as a lightning bug, words spilling from her lips before she could imagine stopping them, “Dear Lord, Henry, what are you doing? Stop!”

“You’ll cut your throat!”

She’d run to him, the short distance across the drab room nothing to her urgent fear, and held his wrist in her firm grasp, the razor poised but motionless against his throat. Not against against, a feather’s-breadth away, as she was from him but no blood had spilt, not even from her own bitten lip. They were alone, Henry having chosen the little closet Mary had once used to see the camp women in, and the sound of her voice still echoed around them.

“Emma?” Henry said, stopping her, asking her a question, more than one. More than one she couldn’t answer, might not. Must not.

“Whatever were you thinking?” she replied, pausing to consider what he might say. She thought of how dark his eyes could be and how hopeless, how he sometimes prayed besides a man’s bed for hours, how he sat there after the man died. “You didn’t mean to-”

“No! No,” he repeated, more quietly the second time but more conclusively. “I only wished to be rid of this beard. I find it doesn’t suit me,” he added, his tone easier, with a hint of the humor that had become too rare. She noticed then the small looking-glass he’d propped against some books Mary must have left behind, the titles lengthy German, the gilt flaking, the basin that held water half-obscured by the clouding of soap. He’d draped his coat on the back of the chair and had done what he could to roll up his sleeves, the bandage on his right hand dry but not the snowy white it should have been.

“You must ask for help then, not risk your life with your injured hand,” she snapped. She was relieved and irritable with it. She felt the urge to stamp her booted foot and made an effort to restrain herself. He somehow saw both and failed to hide his grin. 

“You would volunteer?” he asked, an unseemly request but the world was no longer seemly or fair or orderly in any way. He must have expected her to refuse but _Needs must_ , she thought, and conveyed her answer with the slightest lift of her chin. 

“You would trust me?”

“Of course I would, Emma. I do.” She nodded in response, as he could not, the razor still too close to his carotid artery. She felt his awkward grasp on the razor loosen before he let go. Then she felt the weight of it in her own hand, across her palm, warmed by him.

She set to the task, telling herself it was no different from changing a dressing, from removing stitches from a wound hastily sewn at a battle-field clearinghouse, but she knew she was a liar. This was not any boy, any soldier, it was Henry whose face she held in her hands as she had once before. This time, there was sunlight and the sound of the hospital wards not very far away. She glanced at him and saw, this time, his eyes were open, watching her intently, gentle and perhaps something else she should not admit, even to herself.

“Are you going to watch me the whole time?” she blurted out, half-angrily. He was so handsome, even half-shaved and unkempt, and that dark gaze…

“You **do** have a knife at my throat, Emma,” he replied equably, as if he were only pointing out the most anodyne fact, the day’s weather or the edition of a book. “I shall try not to trouble you though.”

She returned to her work, drawing the blade through the whiskers on his cheeks, along his jaw, as they crept down his neck where the skin was more delicate. The soap had not lathered all that well but the razor was properly sharpened and she found, after a few tentative strokes, the pressure and angle that was best. There was a strange, compelling peace to it, the faint rasp of the steel against his skin, the scent of the soap, her fingers turning his face this way and that, commanding him, keeping him safe. How handsome he was, how well-made, healthy and whole and desirable, if she could allow herself to even think that scandalous thought! She did not admire him in this moment as a Godly work of art or for his ideals, his compulsion to help and to serve; she was entranced with the fineness of his skin, the way the shaven beard cast a pale blue beneath his cheeks, the fullness of his lips and the bridge of his nose, the shadows that began behind his ears and dropped into the open neck of his linen shirt. She leaned forward, to address the challenge of shaving the underside of his jaw, her own mouth pursed with the effort, and suddenly felt his uninjured hand at her waist. She would had thought he meant to steady her, to help her, except for how his hand trembled; that she felt in her hips and her belly, a warmth that lit her skin from within, that held her by the throat. He pressed his hand against her, to stop it from shaking perhaps. His voice was even when he spoke,

“You have such gentle hands.”

What could she say? There was no etiquette for this moment and she was afraid she might say anything that was true—that she cared for him, worried over him and prayed every night for his safety, that she longed to be told she was his only beloved as much as she knew it was a frivolous wish in the middle of a War, a terrible wish when she was a Southern woman and he a Yankee. She could not confess the horror that had taken her when she thought he meant to harm himself or the desire she felt to drop the razor and hold his face in both her hands, to kiss his mouth until they both laughed at the soapy bitterness on their lips, until she only tasted Henry. She said what she could.

“Hush, Henry. You’ll make me lose my place, we’re nearly done.”

“Are we?” he murmured, making the words small and quiet, moving his mouth as little as he could, she thought, while leaving her to grapple with the question, as encompassing as anything could be. She finished drawing the straight razor across his throat, once, twice, ending where he had thought to begin, then wiped it across her apron and set it down on the table.

“There now,” she said, hearing how she was breathless, had held her breath, and looked into his eyes. He was shy and sad and hopeful and she acted before she thought better of it, touched his smooth cheek, below his eye, across his cheekbone, in a gesture that was only a caress. She managed to stop before she could bend toward him for a kiss, but they both felt the slight movement she made, her body nearer to his, her face angled with one intent.

“Thank you. I’ve taken up too much of your time,” he said.

“You lived to tell the tale, which was all I’d hoped, though goodness me, if you should tell Nurse Hastings, how she will squawk! She’s worse than a pea-hen!” Emma replied, finding she spoke the truth and also attempting to find a way to alter the charge between them, enough to let them part.

“I wouldn’t, I won’t tell anyone, you needn’t worry. This will be only between the two of us,” he said solemnly, as if they had become engaged without permission, as if he had compromised her, ignoring what she had said last. It was too much—her hope and her fear and something she couldn’t ask for. Something she could hardly bear waiting for—and she might wait forever. She thought of Mary and Belinda, both happily married after delays and suffering, and both so wise.  


“A secret?” she asked, trying for her old flirtatious tone, one he was unfamiliar with but could recognize. She even batted her eyelashes a little though she let him see her expression as she fluttered about.

“Our secret. I’ll clean up here,” he offered.

“No, you may cut yourself again. Let me do it, you’re needed elsewhere, I won’t be missed another few minutes,” she replied, lifting his mended coat from the chair’s back, offering it up to him to put on. She left her hands on his arms longer than she needed to, shorter than she wanted, and did not rest her cheek against his broad back in its woolen carapace, she did not feel the wing of his shoulder blade beneath her lips.

“That’s not true, I’ll-” he said, then smiled instead of finishing. “But I’ll go. And I’ll make sure Nurse Hastings is suitably diverted until you return. She’s been wondering how I hurt my hand and I think Dr. Hale must finally have his comeuppance.”

**Author's Note:**

> Slimwhistler had once requested a follow-up to my story where Emma doesn't recognize Henry because of his beard, one in which Emma shaves off the beard in question. I have finally obliged. The title is from Emily Dickinson. I hope whoever is still reading enjoys this...


End file.
